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Bioinformatics platform Microbiotica raises £50m to conduct clinical trials

Microbiotica clinical trial
Image credit: Gorodenkoff / Shutterstock

Microbiotica, a healthtech company that has created a platform to develop personalised medicines, has secured £50m in a Series B funding round led by Flerie Invest and Tencent.

Further investment was made by British Patient Capital via its Future Fund, Cambridge Innovation Capital, IP Group and Seventure Partners.

Cambridge-based Microbiotica said it will use the funding to conduct clinical trials later this year for two of its microbiome-based therapeutics.

Microbiotica has developed a platform that analyses datasets about the human microbiome – the collective term for the body’s bacteria – to find and advance therapeutic medicines and biomarkers for a range of disorders and diseases.

It uses artificial intelligence (AI) to trawl through several microbiome datasets. Its current focuses are cancer immunotherapy and inflammatory bowel disease.

“With this additional investment, we will be able to conduct clinical trials with our lead products in immuno-oncology and ulcerative colitis. We will also expand our portfolio of microbiome-based products which have the potential to benefit patients globally,” said Mike Romanos, co-founder and CEO of Microbiotica.

Microbiotica plans to conduct clinical trials for its Live Bacterial Therapeutic MB097 in immune-oncology for treatment of patients who are not responding to anti-PD1 therapy.

It follows a £4m investment from Seventure Partners in 2018, as well as an £8m investment from Cambridge Innovation Capital and IP Group, bringing Microbiotica’s total funding to date to £62m.

Last year, Microbiotica moved to its new headquarters at Chesterford Research Park.

Dr Trevor Lawley, Prof Gordon Dougan FRS and Dr Mike Romanos span Microbiotica out of the Sanger Institute in 2016. The three founders wanted to exploit advances made at the Sanger Institute to address barriers to the translation of the microbiome.

British Patient Capital, launched in 2018, has £2.5bn to invest over the next 10 years.

Judith Hartley, CEO of British Patient Capital, said: “Through its bioinformatics platform, it is generating therapeutic treatments targeting immuno-oncology and ulcerative colitis. It has a number of drug development programmes that are progressing to clinical trials.”

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